Let me give a try to explain what I think life is: First God is LIFE.
This is a true statement but your argument is based on the converse of this. God is life but life is not God.
Indeed, even the statement, "God is life." is a statement that we really don't have a good grasp of. God isn't just alive, God is life itself. God isn't just loving, God is love. God isn't just righteous, God is righteousness, God is not simply rational, God is reason itself. Etc. I believe those statements are true but I can't tell you just what they mean. What I can tell you is that I do not worship life, love, righteousness or reason because those things are not God. In any other context, such wouldn't make sense, right? Usually, if A is B then B is A but that isn't the case here and so these are all a kind of figure of speech where we are saying something about God that isn't quite being communicated by the words we are using.
He gives it in measures to human beings; therefore, there is a living spirit and a living body and when the two were joined then man became a living soul.
Why limit it to humans? Satan is a living creature as are all of the demons, are they not?
See the problem?
For a human to totally die, the body and the soul would have to be lifeless and obliterated.
No, it wouldn't.
I happen to think this happens in the Lake of Fire. Another topic. Well this hasn't happened yet.
There is no biblical evidence for this and it, in fact, undermines the gospel. If Hell isn't forever, then the sin debt is finite and Jesus (God the Son) need not have died. God could have simply created someone of very great, but yet finite, value and sacrificed him instead.
Well, Jesus had a living spirit [happens that God gave of his Spirit to Jesus without measure making him equal with God].
Jesus is God!
The Spirit of God was also associated with a living mortal body who entered the world through the womb of Woman as promised in Genesis 2. Jesus was spiritually God. God the Spirit did not die when Jesus died physically on the cross.
Again, you seem to regress to a definition of death that make it mean to no longer exist. This is not a biblical definition of death.
Jesus was separated from the Father, He was thus spiritually dead. He still existed and was still God the Son and was able to take up his physical life again but had still experienced a separation from the Father.
So, what's the mystery of the body of Jesus which required resurrection from physical death? It was the living image of God created for God's use within his creation and first mentioned in Genesis 1. Who used this living image created by God first? The Father LORD God used it. It was a supernatural image associated with the living invisible Spiritual God. When God the Spirit appeared bearing his living Supernatural body he became a soul.
I think this over complicates things to an unnecessary degree. God the Son, the Logos has always existed and is the Creator of everything that exists besides Himself. Jesus hasn't ever been just a physical body waiting around for God to indwell it. Jesus' physical body didn't exist at all until it was grown in Mary's womb (i.e. the image of God is not the equivalent of Jesus' physical body.)
Did you know God had a soul? God the Spirit became a walking talking being dwelling among men at times.
Leviticus 26:11-13a And I will set my tabernacle [dwelling place] among you: and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people. I am the LORD your God ...
The soul, basically speaking, is who you are. It is your mind, your emotions, your personality. It is that part of you that is YOU. This is just as true of God as it is anyone else.
Do you see the truth? When men said they saw God, they were referring to that living bodily supernatural form God was using. God was not the body. It was merely created for his use to fellowship among men. It is an eternal body which cannot die for God sustains it.
No. This is definitely incorrect. God did not have a body before He was conceived in Mary's womb. He had a form, even one that was corporeal in some sense but whatever it was, it was not the human body that Jesus walked around the Earth in, nor is it the nail scared glorified human body that He has now.
Now, back to Jesus. Jesus was God and he bore that same living image which the Father had,
No. Jesus had a human body that hadn't ever existed prior to it having grown from one of Mary's eggs.
...but its essence was of flesh and mortal. When his body died, God the Spirit appearing as, the begotten Son, did not die.
Then we are back to square one.
Define what it means to die.
Not what happens to you after death or any other side issue. What does it mean to be dead? Before, you agreed that it was a separation. This
bolded statement you've made seems to contradict that. So, what is it then?
How might God the Spirit have given all of the spirit and all things of God?
This question does not make sense in the English language?
This question is a non-sequitor. What would it even mean?
No ... but God can give things over time as needed. Jesus was not denied anything but he did not know everything instantly. God shared at his will.
I'm not following this. What does this have to do with what we are discussing?
Now Jesus is like the Heavenly Father. They are each unique personages representing the ONE invisible God.
I can't tell whether you're saying something false or if you're just using sort of loose language here.
No member of the Trinity is "representing" anything. The Father is THE God - period. Jesus is THE God - period. The Holy Spirit is THE God - period.
I just don't see how Jesus, God the Son, was ever separated from God the invisible Spirit. Isaiah 43:11 tells us succinctly: I, even I, Am the LORD; beside me there is no Savior. IOW, God is the Savior ...
I didn't say that He was separated from the Holy Spirit, I said (actually it is the bible that says) that He was separated from the Father. I quoted the passage verbatim...
Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Jesus routinely referred to the Father as "my God" and there is no record of Him ever referring to the Spirit in this fashion. Thus, it was the Father that Jesus was separated from.
BUT I do see Jesus as an individual of the God Head as much as I perceive the Father LORD/YHWH is an individual of the God head. For the Father and the Son each have their own heavenly bodies now.
The Father DOES NOT have a heavenly body! I don't know where you got such a teaching but you would do well to drop it. It is definitely false.
One day our Risen Lord will introduce the saints to the supernatural eternal LORD Father. When we have seen them, we have seen the invisible God's chosen visible presence. I Timothy 6:14-17. ... which in his times shall show us who is the blessed and only Potentate, King of kings, and Lord of lords, Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto who no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and power everlasting.
The Father isn't invisible to heavenly beings right now, nor has He ever been so far as anything the bible says goes.
Jesus did not have immortality for he was sent to die.
There is no evidence that Jesus' body would have ever died without having been intentionally killed. Death, including physical death, is a consequence of sin, which Jesus was completely free of and utterly untouched by.
He received it after he finished his mission.
Chapter and verse please.
It was the Father that lived in unapproachable light from the beginning.
Jesus and the Father are One!
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 8:24 Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for
if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”
The LORD shielded Moses from its danger as he approached in all his glory and only let Moses see his back parts clearly as he retreated. Jesus will introduce the saints to the Father.
No one has ever seen God (The Father) at any time. What Moses saw was He who would become Jesus.
- “No one has seen God [the Father] at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18). 1 John 4:12 repeats that first sentence. That alone proves that Moses did not see God the Father.
- Old Testament texts that use the expression the LORD (Yahweh) are cited in the New Testament as referring to the Lord Jesus. Compare Exod 3:14-15 and John 8:58; Ps 23:1 and John 10:11; Isa 48:12 and Rev 1:17-18. See this article at Gotquestions.org.
- The LORD wrote the Ten Commandments with His finger. Twice. (Moses broke the first tablets.) Jesus has fingers with which to write. God the Father does not.
- The Lord Jesus stooped and wrote in the dirt with His finger (John 8:1-11). Twice. It is reasonable to speculate that Jesus was asserting that He Himself was the one who gave the Law to Moses.
- The preincarnate Lord Jesus appeared often in the OT. Most or all references to “the Angel of the Lord” refer to Jesus (see this verse by verse ministry article and this article at Gotquestions.org, which waffles a bit). Jesus appeared to Adam and Eve (Gen 3:8), Cain (Gen 4:6-15), Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; 15:1-21; 17:1-22; 18:1-33), Hagar (Gen 16:7), Moses (burning bush, Mount Sinai), the three men in the fiery furnace (Dan 3:25), and many others.
Now, where was Jesus before he came as the begotten Son?
He was the WORD who was God and was with God and he shared the bodily glory with the Father LORD. I know this from a prayer Jesus spoke.
John 17:4-5 I [Jesus] have glorified thee [Father God] on earth: I have finished the work you gave me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory I had with [shared with] thee before the world was.
That verse does not teach what you just stated. It says exactly NOTHING about "bodily glory".
Where did you get this stuff from?
Just like Jesus said: When you have seen me you have seen the Father. I think the Father could have said: When you have seen me you have seen the pre-incarnate image of the Messiah.
Well, like I said before. It's probably best to just leave the scripture alone and just let it say what it actually does say.
How were the Father and the Son both God? They both had complete access to all things of the Spirit. They each bore the living image God created for his personal use... and He knew he would use it repeatedly. That's why He said: Let us make mankind after our image. ONE image representing the ONE God as two unique individuals.
There simply is no evidence that the Father has ever "used" a created image for Himself. Jesus (God the Son) is the singular mediator between God (The Father) and mankind.
Further, your comments here subordinate both the Father and the Son to the Spirit of God. They are not subordinate, they are equivalent. They are simultaneously the singular God and three different persons. The primary difference between the three having to do with their role, not their value, power, wisdom or divinity.
What you seem to be trying to do is to explain this. You can't. Not because it is contradictory but because we simply haven't been given the information needed to explain it. I suspect that we haven't been given this information because it is sufficiently outside the scope of human experience that there isn't any way to express the information in human language. It would be like explaining how a scanning electron microscope works to Abraham - only far worse.
So sorry Clete. I ramble on because I have so much I want to say. I hope this was not a confusing post.
A little confusing but I'm not complaining. I like this better than the single sentence sound bytes that most people tend to respond with on web forums.
I apologize that my replies are so lengthy. I will try to focus on the question and be more concise.
Don't worry about the length. You've got nothing on me when it comes to lengthy posts! I've written some real whoppers!
Respond to what you want of my posts and ignore the rest and I'll do the same. If there's something that either of us skip that we really want responded to then just say so.
As for me, the central issue here has to do with just what it means to die and whether it would rightly apply to what Jesus experience at Calvary.
Clete